


Five Times Rumpelstiltskin was Haunted By Belle - And One Time She Was Real

by Fyre



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-17
Updated: 2012-05-17
Packaged: 2017-11-05 13:13:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/406814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, when we lose someone, they never leave us.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Rumpelstiltskin was Haunted By Belle - And One Time She Was Real

**Author's Note:**

> I completely blame Adele's 21 album for this. It is MADE OF ANGST.
> 
> Spoilers for full S1 of OUaT.

1.

 

The first time he thought he saw her, after Regina’s visit, was when he realised just how cruel the mind could be.

Someone was in the halls, and he stepped out of the shadows to confront them.

“They hurt me,” she whispered, holding out hands that were bloody. Her dress was the same one she wore when she walked out the door, but in tattered rags. She had tears on her face. She was limping and he could see bloody footprints on the floor.

Scourged and flayed.

He wanted to gather her in his arms and hold her and heal her and make her better.

She fell, and he moved to catch her, and she screamed in pain. He could see flesh in ribbons, every inch of her, and he pulled back, afraid, so afraid of hurting her more. Her eyes were wide, black pools and there were tears and she reached out to him. 

“Please, make it stop,” she whispered. “End me. Please.”

“Belle,” he choked out. “Belle, no. You can live, dearie.”

She shook her head, drops like rubies spattering the floor. “Hurts. Please, make it stop.” She pulled his hands around her throat, made him squeeze.

He woke with a scream

 

________________________________________________________________________________________

 

2\. 

He saw her again when he had drunk too much. Or not enough.

The alcohol was usually a safe refuge, smothering the screams in his mind. She haunted him so often that he never went anywhere without the flask to keep away the bleeding shadow of a woman who threw herself from the tower. Belle was brave. She chose her own fate. Even casting herself onto shattering rocks. His brave Belle.

Spinning was barely enough anymore, two faces twined eternally in the wheel. The curse was taking time, and was lacking something, something vital. He knew what it was, and thinking on it just made it that little bit worse. He had it, once, and lost it, and now, he had to wait until some other fool had what he had thrown away.

She came to him.

A cloud of dark hair by moonlight.

He knew who she was.

Of course he did.

He had been waiting for her. 

All the same, when she started to turn, and he saw pale skin and the dark hair and bright eyes full of broken-hearted grief, he would have thrust his thumbnail beneath his sternum and twisted if it could have eased the pain. 

She breathed true love, little Snow White. She breathed it and lived it, and she was the source, one half of the puzzle he had been fighting so hard to find. A broken heart bearing true love, and a true love who cared not. It might yet be enough. 

He held out few hopes for the Shepherd Prince. The boy had chosen wealth over family. That spoke ill of him, even if he had won the heart of fair Snow.

Rumpelstiltskin knew what it was to be without.

He knew little enough kindness, but what little he had, he could spare for one such as himself.

That she granted him a strand of her hair, imbued with True Love’s grief, was a beginning, a hope. 

Bae.

He still may yet find Bae. 

Strange, though, that it didn’t feel enough anymore.

 

________________________________________________________________________________________

 

3\. 

She visited him most often when he dared to sleep. The cruelty of the nightmares when she begged him to end her were nothing, not even a drop in the ocean, when compared to the dreams of her whole and loving. 

He seldom slept anymore.

As much as he longed to see her face, waking in a world where she no longer existed was as painful as blades to his heart.

She would hold his face in her hands, smile, kiss him, love him, talk to him as she always did. She never feared him. She laughed with him. She teased him. She would draw him out into the world.

And he would wake alone with only the briefest of memories of her face.

In those moments, when the renewed grief was freshest, he would walk the halls, spin until his fingers were raw and bleeding, circle the grounds, cast himself into the world, seeking the desperate, the pitiful, anything that could draw his mind from her.

The curse was a powerful talisman.

He could almost lose himself in it, and that was what twisted it, so gently, away from Snow and her dear Charming Prince.

Their love was powerful.

How much more powerful would something be that was created by it? Something that would need to flourish and grow? That, surely, would be far more potent that the parents alone. Children, he knew, were strength.

“What are you doing?”

His hands trembled at the parchment. “You’re not here.”

“I am,” she whispered. Her arms slid around him, her chin on his shoulder, and he closed his eyes against the grief. “I told you. I will go with you forever.”

“Leave me be,” he whispered, bringing his hands to draw her arms away, yet unable, not brave enough to touch them. “Please, leave me be. You’re not real. You’re never real.”

“I’m as real as you want me to be,” she murmured, and he could swear, could truly believe, he could feel her breath on his skin. She pressed her cheek to his shoulder through the shirt. “Forever.”

He choked on the sob, his hands trembling in front of him. “Please…”

“Don’t make me go,” she breathed. “Not again. Not after what happened last time.”

He whirled around with a hoarse cry of grief, then stumbled. 

The room was empty and dark and his chipped, empty heart was racing.

He folded to his knees, wrapping his arms over his head, and prayed to any Gods that might hear that he might have some peace, some respite, some silence. If they responded, it was only to laugh, and he knew she was going to be there, with him, forever. 

 

________________________________________________________________________________________

 

4.

 

The Dark Curse.

It tasted of bitterness and darkness when he told Regina how to cast it. He couldn’t force her hand. He never would. That was the nature of the deals. He had to know if people would be desperate enough, but he could never know if they would do everything he intended them to do. 

He coiled up in the corner of Charming’s precious dungeon, drumming his claws on his knees. It was taking too long. It was all taking too long. The curse needed to be cast, and then, he could finally be in the world where Bae was.

The curse was a beautiful creature, so twisted up in scales and spikes that no one would look close enough to see what it actually did. He giggled to himself, shrill and trembling. It was like him, the Dark Curse. Not what it seemed. It would cast them into a new world, that much was true, but they would never know what they had lost.

For the first time in years, he would never know what he had lost.

He rocked on the straw.

It would be peaceful, just for a little while. 

“Hush,” she whispered, her hands stroking his hair. “Hush.”

He closed his eyes. “You’re dead.”

“That may be,” she whispered. “But you remember me.”

“How could I forget?” he asked in a trembling whisper. “Belle…”

“You’ll forget soon enough,” she said, and he could hear sadness in her voice, his Belle, his love. “You’ll forget all about me.”

His eyes flew open and he stared wildly around the empty cell.

He would. He would forget about her. He would forget about Bae. He would forget about the two people he loved more in all the world.

The magic thrummed suddenly, loud and strong, and he screamed.

The curse had been cast.

 

________________________________________________________________________________________

 

5.

Emma.

Her name was Emma.

Blonde, striking, and that name rang through his mind like a gong. 

It was if the dust of generations was being shaken off old tapestries and curtains, and light was flooding in. Memories came back a little at a time as he left Granny’s. He remembered a life before, in pieces, but gathering momentum, and surging through him.

He was only glad to reach his front door before the worst of them came.

He stumbled through the house to a cabinet. It housed his most precious items, yet he had never really looked at it, not properly. There was a ball, plain, hand stitched. Bae. It was Bae’s. 

And a cup. Small. White. Chipped. A blue flower.

_With you, forever - I’m sorry, it’s chipped - you owe me a story - something changed my mind - you’re a coward Rumpelstiltskin - she died._

He reached out with trembling fingers.

“Forever.”

The whisper was like a chill down his spine and he caught a glimpse of a face in the polished door of the cabinet. His heart thundered, and he almost sagged with relief and sorrow, when he realised it was only his reflection.

 

________________________________________________________________________________________

 

One

 

Gold felt calm for the first time in months.

The potion was in his hand. The curse was about to be broken, when either one of Henry’s mothers dared to show her true feelings for her child. Finally, he would be able to finish what he had begun so long ago.

The bell jangled, startling him.

There was no reason for anyone in Storybrooke to be at the door so early.

He hastily packed away the golden egg, the potion safely stowed in his pocket.

“Excuse me,” the visitor said. “Are you Mr Gold?”

“Yes, I am,” he replied, all too adept at dismissing unwanted customers. “But I’m afraid the shop’s closed.” The words had barely left his mouth when he turned, and his heart felt like it had dropped out of his chest. 

Not now. 

Not again.

Not when he needed to think straight.

Belle walked towards him, as if she had every right to be there. She didn’t look as she did in his memories, not the bloody, tortured creature nor the lovely, neat little housekeeper she had been. Her hair was tangled, her clothing mismatched and strange.

He could smell a chemical staleness that had never come with her before. 

“I was told to find you,” she said, looking at him as if she didn’t know him. “And tell you that Regina locked me up.” She looked confused, as if she didn’t quite know what she was saying, as he unsteadily picked his way around the table. “Does that mean anything to you?”

She looked like Belle. She sounded like Belle. But she didn’t look at him like Belle did. She looked at him like a stranger. She looked at him as if she couldn’t remember. As if she was in the thrall of a curse. The curse.

He couldn’t breathe, staring at her. 

It was impossible.

He had searched, in vain, for her then. 

Regina lied. He had believed that until he had found no sign of her.

It was impossible. Belle was dead. She was dead and gone and no one but him remembered her. 

He reached out, trembling, and his hand met a warm, real body. 

He almost fell, there and then, his mind blank with shock.

“You’re real,” he whispered, stunned. “You’re alive.” Impossible, but not so impossible if Regina had done what Regina always did. And she must have. Played him for a fool, and then taken the one thing he could have cared for. “She did this to you?”

The girl who was Belle, truly Belle, alive and whole and not a figment of imagination or nightmares or memories, gazed at him in confusion. “I was told you’d protect me?” she said uncertainly.

Gold - Rumpelstiltskin - felt his heart hammer in his chest.

He could and would and he wouldn’t fail her, not this time.

“Oh yes,” he gasped out, unable to stop himself from gathering her, his Belle, alive, and well and here, in his arms. “Yes, I’ll protect you.”

She pulled back, and he wanted to sob, scream, anything when she looked at him and said, lost and confused, “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

His Belle, his love, and he had cursed her.

“No,” he said, his voice trembling. The curse was shaking, he knew it. Soon, very soon, she would be his Belle again, and she would be with him, forever, as she had always promised. And he would love her for every minute of it. “No, but you will.”


End file.
